Touching a Nerve

It’s the summer gaming/TV transition once again.  All of the major TV shows are finished for the next few months, leaving only Harper’s Island and a massive stack of The Wire, Buffy and dozens of other shows for contemplation.  Once upon a time I used to bemoan having a lot of movies to watch, now I seem intent on making things much harder for myself by getting into shows with at least 100 episodes to plough through.

Still, it’s not exactly a race to watch it all, the media isn’t going to self destruct if unwatched for a few months (or even years).
I have mentioned in previous posts that I have recently subscribed to the GAME rentals service, and am now three games in and extremely happy with the service.

But here’s something of an oddity, my first two games were 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (well documented here in an earlier post) and Wanted: Weapons of Fate.  Both are definitely B-tier shooters but the one thing they did have going for them was that they were fun, and I quite happily sat around for hours playing them through to completion in a single day.

But then Call of Duty: World at War arrived on Friday and despite it being a very competant shooter that does set pieces like no other franchise, I just can’t bring myself to complete it at the moment.  Even when I am playing it I’m hoping the level will soon be over so I can turn it off and go and do something else.

I have to give developer Treyarch credit for the game though, despite being the Infinity Ward B-Team, it is a great improvement on their last CoD title which benefits enormously from running the latest version of the Modern Warfare engine.
There is something about World at War that makes me feel…uneasy.  You are warned at the start of the game that it contains disturbing imagery, which is primarily old newsreel footage from the war which brings everything home and makes the game all the more shocking.  When you are fighting aliens or space marines you know that the creatures have been designed by a group of people purely for ones amusement.  But with a game that is based on actual events when you are carrying out the self same acts that are displayed in the archive footage it almost feels wrong in some way.

One thing is for sure, WaW is a very visceral title, but one where you spray Japanese soldiers with a flamethrower, then hear the bodies cracking from the heat afterwards… I don’t know, perhaps I am just feeling a little more sensitive than usual.  It’s playing too many happy, smiley Wii games that’s to blame.

Speaking of which, I increased my Wii library with Animal Crossing, Madworld and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.  Not that I have played any yet, the long pre-summer evenings of late have meant that by the time the sun goes down I’m too exhausted to do anything other than vegetate in front of Buffy (two episodes to go until the end of season 2).

But rounding things up for today, I hope all of my friends in the US are having a good Memorial Day weekend, and be sure to celebrate those who gave their lives so we can enjoy living ours.

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Category: Videogames